Confirmation: hd 3870 has problems with certain monitors

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fakepower1

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Nov 28, 2007
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After installing my sapphire hd3870 in a new system, the video was blank on startup.
Thankfully i did some searching, and found a thread on this forum. After reading the thread, i concluded i had the same problem.

SO if you get a hd3870 but your system then boots to a blank screen (the monitor appears to be in power saving mode or recieving no signal) and never recieve any video, it is likely the card is not DOA but rather your monitor and card have a conflict.

There is a work around that is discussed:
Take the dvi->vga converter and then use the vga cable to connect to your monitor. That will allow you to access the bios or any 'pre-windows' functions you might need. This can be necessary if you are building a new system like myself and must upgrade the bios, or make changes to it.

Once the computer is configured the dvi cable can then be used. HOWEVER you will not reviece any video prior to the windows login screen.

Currently the only known monitor that conflicts is :
Sceptre X20WC-Gamer 20" 16:10 Wide LCD http://www.sceptre.com/Products/LCD/Specifications/spec_x20wc-Gamer.htm


IF YOUR MONITOR HAS THE SAME CONFLICT REPLY TO THIS POST AND I WILL KEEP A RUNNING LIST.

this post is a follow up to this thread:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1245885
 
your card is bad, plain and simple. Return or RMA it. It's a quality control issue with the DVI ports on the card itself, and it can happen to any card. I had the same issue with a new 8800GT and RMA'd it, we will see how that pans out. In the meantime, if you can, test your 3870 on multiple different monitors, in different systems, and using different cables. If the result is the same with each, the card is bad. If it works on some monitors and not others then you can say its some kind of incompatibility problem, but you didn't say whether you tested it on different monitors or not.
 
I had a similar issue once...but turned out it was the cable, not the card or monitor.
 
There are three type of DVI: DVI-D, DVI-A and DVI-I (A+D). DVI-D can be converted to HDMI and DVI-A can be converted to VGA. You will have a problem when the card is sending out a DVI-D signal but the monitor is accepting a DVI-A signal, this can happen when you use a DVI-I cable.
 
alg7_munif said:
There are three type of DVI: DVI-D, DVI-A and DVI-I (A+D). DVI-D can be converted to HDMI and DVI-A can be converted to VGA. You will have a problem when the card is sending out a DVI-D signal but the monitor is accepting a DVI-A signal, this can happen when you use a DVI-I cable.
Click to expand...

In my case I'm using the DVI-D cable that came with the monitor on a DVI-I output from my card. This is "supposed" to work. Samsungs site has my exact card listed as compatible.

When I get some time later today I'm going to try and find what pins on DVI-D carry the signal for boot. If anyone has that info would love to see it so I could check the output voltage of the pins and figure if its card, cable, or monitor.

Might give Samsung a call also and ask.
 
Given two similar video cards (8800GT 512mb and 8800GTS 640mb), both using the same DVI-I ports, DVI-D cables and DVI-D monitor inputs (tested on two different monitors), the only reason one of them would not be sending a signal over DVI is if one card is bad and the other is good. Period.

At least that was my testing setup and I will hopefully confirm that finding when I get two new 8800GTs this week.
 
:( I've gone through three HD 3870 cards (3 different brands too, sapphire, visiontek, gecube) and they all had the same problem of no display outside of windows via DVI. I also tried 3 different DVI cables, all of which are DVI-D (cheap stock, Monster MDVI500, Belkin Dual-Link PureAV). VGA D-Sub works fine as suggested here. Monitor is 20" Sceptre X20G-NagaIII.

I've tried ati x1900xt and x600xt, as well as nvidia 8800GTX, they all worked correctly with same monitor and cables.

(Setting PEG instead of PCI as first initial display did not solve my problem)
 
I tried my monitor on another computer today thanks to a very nice local shop. The post screen worked perfect on their machine through DVI-D which eliminates the monitor and cable as the problem. I mention more about it if you follow the link in post #2 here.
 
My Samsung 226bw is the same. I had to hook up my Dell widescreen and then set initial display to PEG link mode. (PCI Express) Worked for me.:)
 
I had to do the same with my card when I bought my Viewsonic, had to start with vga then switch to dvi and that was with my Ati 2900.
 
I had same problems with 7600gt on Ati x200 mobo, had to start windows from integrated x300 and update bios before 7600gt started working.
 
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